A Rented House in Castello
July 6, 2018 Last week, my spouse Houri and I found the rented house in the Castello district where Abbot Mkhitar stayed for two years from the time following his […]
An Island With No Name
/in Chair's Blog /by historywebJuly 6, 2018, Venice Ever since my first visit to Venice as a student for a summer course at Collegio Moorat-Raphael in 1988 (if memory serves), the island of San […]
The Graveyard as an Archive
/in Chair's Blog /by historywebDecember 1, 2019, Kolkata On 10 January 1727, an Armenian priest stationed in the remote Dutch outpost of Chinsura (Chichra or Չիչրա in Julfa dialect and Chuchura in Bengali) named […]
When in Kolkata…, or Hotels and Armenians
/in Chair's Blog /by historywebSebouh David Aslanian November 27, 2019 When in Kolkata to conduct research on the Armenians in India, what better place to lodge at than a historic hotel established by one […]
A History that has Vanished: Armenians in Eighteenth-Century Kabul
/in Chair's Blog /by historywebAugust 19, 2018 Kabul (Afghanistan) during the eighteenth century is not a place one would expect to find an Armenian community, much less one with a church and two priests. […]
Of Signets and Seals
/in Chair's Blog /by historywebDecember 29, 2018 Shared epistolary practices between Julfan Armenians and other Iranians included the “material conditions of letter writing”1 recently explored in James Daybell’s fine study of early modern English […]
What’s in a Merchant’s Head?
/in Chair's Blog /by historywebNovember 2, 2015 We know much about the commodities Armenian and other merchants in India handled but nearly nothing on what they read and therefore what they may have thought […]
A Persianate Epistolary Adab?
/in Chair's Blog /by historywebA Persianate Epistolary Adab? December 21, 2018 One cold winter evening in New Julfa, Isfahan, I was puzzled by a commercial document I had photographed earlier. It was many moons […]
Of Letter Cutting and Fonts: Print culture and the Circulation of technology Across the Indian Ocean
/in Chair's Blog /by historywebMay 31, 2019 “…it must be remembered that punch cutting, striking and casting moulds were all long and delicate operations which only specialised craftsmen could perform. A punch cutter, for […]